Leading from start to finish, Sestao Naturgas won the Spanish Team Championship with a round to spare. The team from the Basque Country finished a whopping three points ahead of runner-up C.A. Solvay. The C.E. Foment Martinenc team relegated this year.

The winners, Sestao Naturgas, all dressed in red | Photos kindly provided by the organizers

In the final three rounds of the Spanish Team Championship the victory was never in danger for the team from Sestao, a Basque town of 30,000 inhabitants. They were the big favourites at the start, with five strong grandmasters from abroad (Leinier Dominguez, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Anish Giri, Laurent Fressinet and Romain Edouard) and four of them rated over 2700.

In the fifth round (you can find our previous reports here and here) Sestao beat the other Basque team and reigning champions Gros Xake-Taldea 4-2 with four draws and two wins. It was a nice revenge for last year, when Sestao also won the individual encounter but eventually finished second behind Gros-Xake in the final standings, on board points. And no doubt the rivalry included some Dutch flavour, with Anish Giri playing for Sestao and Loek van Wely playing for Gros Xake!

In this match Leinier Dominguez beat Ruslan Ponomariov on board one. The new plan played by the Cuban in this Berlin Ending might be of theoretical importance. Black's light-squared bishop was dead wood throughout the game. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave drew with Loek van Wely on board two and Anish Giri beat Christian Bauer on three. (See the selection of games below.)

Sestao Naturgas vs Gros Xake-Taldea 

Sestao dropped only one match point in the seven rounds that were played in León. In round six they tied their match with C.A. Solvay, who would finish in second place. Again four boards were drawn, and again Giri won, grinding down Surya Ganguly in a rook ending that looked quite drawish. This game saved the match point for Sestao, because on board one Leinier Dominguez suffered his only loss, against Pentala Harikrishna.

And so Sestao clinched the title with a round to spare, and they kept their three-point lead by beating C.E. Barcelona Uga 4-2 on Sunday. C.A. Solvay, the "Indian" team (with Harikrishna, Negi and Ganguly on top boards), finished second. C.E. Foment Martinenc was the team that relegated this year.

The best individual result was for GM Aleksander Delchev of Bulgaria who scored 6/7 for C.A. Solvay. IM Olga Alexandrova scored the same, excellent result in her team from Barcelona but against lower rated opponents. Sestao's success was partly the result of two 2700 players who scored 5/7: board one Leinier Dominguez and board three Anish Giri.

Selection of games rounds 5-7

PGN file

Spanish Team Championship 2012 | Teams

Spanish Team Championship 2012 | Final standings